ABSTRACT
Crime is, first of all, a legal conception, human behaviour punishable under the criminal law. It is, however, much more than only a legal phenomenon. The frontiers of criminology would not be so difficult to define as will have appeared from the previous chapter if there would not be so many doubts as to the meaning of its fundamental concept, crime. It is a dilemma confronting probably all scientific disciplines that they are engaged in an unending search for the definition of their basic concepts. Kant's famous dictum: Noch suchen die Juristen eine Definition zu ihrem Begriffe vom Recht 1 (Jurists are still trying to find their definition of ‘law’), was, as the context shows, meant neither in a disparaging sense nor as pointing to a weakness peculiar to the science of law. The same lack of clear-cut definition characterizes such other basic concepts as health and disease, or electricity, or society, and it has even been maintained as a general proposition that it is not for the specialist but for the philosopher to provide all such definitions. 2 In this sense, too, criminologists may find their right challenged to be masters in their own house.
